Due to me being an avid reader of BarstoolSports.com, I came across a little website known as worldstarhiphop.com. From this sight the bloggers at Barstool have posted many videos of random brawls captured on peoples phones and video cameras. These fights are not staged and happen at anytime and anyplace. Before I go on I think it would add to my blog if you watched one of the videos first.
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhg8aSB0rGj8wj523V
What you first notice when watching this video is that people are amused at what is going on. Once a fight starts everyone brings their phones out to try and get the best video. Some people even yell “WORLD STAR HIP HOP!” while filming instead of trying to stop the fight.
The fact that these videos have become so popular, along with shows like Worlds Most Amazing Videos, is because we are fascinated by violence and pain. We all can relate to being in pain and although we know how much it sucks, we cant look away when someone else is hurt. An everyday example of this is rubbernecking. Ever wonder why the traffic is bad when a car has crashed a mile down the road? Its because everyone wants to see what happened and see if someone got hurt. It could, of course, be because they are concerned for the persons safety but when you add that to our fascination with UFC and full contact sports, you start to see that we enjoy seeing pain.
I am obviously no different since I always watch a world star hip hop video when I find one online but I like to think that I am different from the people in those videos who would rather record the fight than try to stop it. I don’t think I would be laughing if I saw that fight in person, but hearing some of those laughs shows you how our society really feels about senseless violence and how we as a people deal with it.
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ReplyDeleteJust to add on to what Trey said I'd like to point out that we also find comedy in violence. For example the show America's Funniest Videos or Whacked Out Sports show violent images of people hurting themselves in either humorous situations or ways. The act of viewing the clips reassures the audience that the person is alive and well at the time of the clips airing on TV. These types of TV programs help to aestheticize violence in mainstream American media and have been largely successful as evidenced by their continued airing.
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